For Fall-Winter 2025, Sportmax begins an introspection of its past legacies, current realities and its future intentions.
Since the first collection presented in 1969, Sportmax has remained a cognisant response to its changing environment. It emerged during a pivotal moment in our collective history, a period that sparked a new way of living, of loving and of dressing — rejecting the established old guard for a new era of modernity that advocated freedom over all. Immersed in the vibrancy of the period, Sportmax became a catalyst of the ready-to-wear revolution by reinventing the women’s wardrobe with an unprecedented vision, highly evolved for everyday living.
Mirroring its legacy of experimentation, FW’25 is about hyper-reinvention —where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. It looks to the emphatic women in its ecosystem: the artisans, designers, colleagues, mothers and friends who infuse Sportmax’s intellectual design language with realistic intention. Archetypes of the contemporary wardrobe become utilities for life, founded on simple ideas made with complex techniques that define a new iconoclastic luxury.
The collection’s dualities are expressed through specialised fabrics and techniques, beginning with Sportmax’s signature doublé wool. Essential garments are infused with its sensuality, twisted and reinterpreted in opaque layers. A reintroduction of denim from the house’s iconic repertoire sees raw and doublé denim tailored and cut-up into unexpected yet familiar shapes. Sumptuous leather coats are juxtaposed with bonded fleece or stamped in textured python, while a fully-fashioned knit suit in engineered yarn is a dynamic alternative to classic suiting.
An exhibition of the atelier’s artful savoir-faire, shapes and silhouettes are drawn in unbroken lines that expand and contract as if cast from a single roll of fabric, evoking a sense of freedom and motion. Using the body as a foundation, their soft architecture unfolds intuitively around it in limitless circularity. Blazers and trousers are functional yet innovative, subverting the norm for comfortable contrasts of oversized and feminine cuts. Laser-cut fringe cascades off the shoulders and hems of coats, dresses and scarves, adding texture and dimension to their silhouettes.
The collection is punctuated by an evolved range of accessories designed for real life scenarios. A reflection of the ready-to-wear, supple leather fringe is imagined as a soft shoulder or large cross-body bag, the latter evoking a fringe cape when carried across the back; and the must-have Soffy bag returns in laminated or snake-stamped leather. This season, soft leather heels and knee-high boots are ergonomically designed with a translucent low heel in an ideal combination of style and mobility. To complete the total look, modernist eyewear and jewellery distort basic shapes in twisted metal to become objects of exception
